Broken to be Whole

Originally Posted on September 17, 2004Last Updated on October 21, 2006

Death is incumbent
Unforeseeable in the eyes of a 25 year old behind a cigarette and a drunk drive
My grandmother as a sculpture, painted and stiff
Casket centerpiece with fields of flowers in dedication
Jesus, through the good Reverend, recruiting new minions in a time of reflection and strife
Come home and be with me, with the dead before, cry into my arms
The karmic hosts will have to suffice for those of us unaware of fiery retribution in denial

Children bury their grandmother
A cold piercing rain slides off of umbrellas, too useless and trivial to hold high
We stand in the wet as the mud slips down into her plot
Casket rusting before the worms ever had a chance
A moment of silence and all six of us standing around
I wanted to throw dirt on her box, a final commitment
But the administrators of such affairs hurried us away before that big box could be dropped down into the soily seed that would forever hold her body
Even while her soul is flittering around
Young and free again, to Heaven or Mars or Vegas or wherever a woman who’s spent her life on the same farm might find suitable to journey

Back at the viewing, as her children stood around weeping or telling stories to keep eachother occupied
“The rain in Spain is a drain on my brain”
“I can’t believe the leaves have begun to fall”
I wrote a poem and while no one was looking slipped it into her casket
So that in a million years when the Almighty makes his return to pull up our earthly hosts
We can all sit around and get melo-sweet about it all

Memory is a minute but the written word is for all time
I smile as I look at the clay form before me, shaped similarly to her body
But clearly a strange doppleganger of a replacement
I’m smiling and realizing that I perhaps shouldn’t be
But I rejoice in the death of it all
The end of your time is the end
And to deny it to yourself is suitable only for a groundbreaking new sitcom
But I’m not on TV
And so I wonder if at some point someone really close to me might die
Not an untimely uncle or an old aged grandmother
But my own love or my son
My mother or sister
Will I really break down and weep then?
The two toddler children, one my own, one my cousin’s son
They fidget in their seats and trade places between grandmother and parent
I laugh a little at them
The pastor ends a prayer…

“…without being broken we can never be whole.”

Karma and the devil dance together tonight and no one is sad in the afterlife, except perhaps for us.